The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) just declared this a recession. They date the start of this downturn at December 2007!

Perhaps we are near the bottom of this cycle which is already longer than average according to G. H. Moore, Business Cycles, Inflation and Forecasting, 2nd ed., 1983. You can see his summary of two centuries of economic cycles at the Library of Economics and Liberty: http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/Recessions.html